Seneca sandstone: A heritage stone from the United States C. Grissom 1 *, E. Aloiz 2 , E. Vicenzi 1 , and R. Livingston 3 1 Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute, 4210 Silver Hill Rd., Suitland, MD 20746, U.S.A. 2 4047 Argyle Avenue, Erie, PA 16505, U.S.A. 3 Material Science and Engineering Dept., University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, U.S.A. *Corresponding author (email: [email protected]) Abstract: Seneca sandstone is a fine-grained arkosic sandstone of dark-red coloration used primarily during the nineteenth century in Washington, DC. The quarries, which are not active, are located along the Potomac River 34 kilometers northwest of Washington near Poolesville, Maryland. Seneca sandstone is from the Poolesville Member of the Upper-Triassic Manassas Formation, which is in turn a Member of the Newark Supergroup that crops out in eastern North America. Its first major public use is associated with George Washington, the first president of the Potomac Company founded in 1785 to improve the navigability of the Potomac River, with the goal of opening transportation to the west for shipping. The subsequent Chesapeake and Ohio Canal parallel to the river made major use of Seneca sandstone in its construction and then facilitated the stone’s transport to the capital for the construction industry. The most significant building for which the stone was used is the Smithsonian Institution Building or ‘Castle’ (1847– 1855), the first building of the institution and still its administrative center. Many churches, school buildings, and homes in the city were built wholly or partially with the stone during the ‘brown decades’ of the latter half of the nineteenth century. Seneca sandstone is a fine-grained, dark-red arkosic sandstone formerly quarried along the Potomac River 34 kilometers northwest of the United States capital, Washington, DC, near Poolesville, Maryland. Its first major public use is associated with the nation’s first president, George Washington, during the late eighteenth century, but the sandstone was used primarily for construction of major buildings in Washington in the nineteenth century. Geologically, the stone is from the Poolesville Member of the Upper-Triassic Manassas Formation found in the states of Maryland and Virginia; this Formation is in turn a Member of the Newark Supergroup, which crops out in eastern North America from Nova Scotia in Canada to South Carolina in the U.S. (Olsen 1980, Lee & Froelich 1989); see Figure 1. Other Members of the Newark Supergroup are well known for providing building stones that dominated domestic construction in New York and other major east coast cities during the latter half of the nineteenth century, especially Portland brownstone from the Connecticut River valley, New Jersey brownstone, and Pennsylvania’s Hummelstown brownstone, all of which are also Upper-Triassic arkosic sandstones (Matero & Teutonico 1982). Operations at the Seneca quarries ceased at the beginning of the twentieth
Seneca sandstone: A heritage stone from the United States
May 01, 2023
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